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After ran a process Active(file) and Inactive(file) size is continuously increasing in my Linux system. What is mean by Active(file) and Inactive(file) memory in /proc/meminfo ? 

$ cat /proc/meminfo

MemTotal: 16464260 kB
MemFree: 5206868 kB
Buffers: 17980 kB
Cached: 7395552 kB
SwapCached: 114124 kB
Active: 5590956 kB
Inactive: 4426264 kB
Active(anon): 2191992 kB
Inactive(anon): 416676 kB
Active(file): 3398964 kB
Inactive(file): 4009588 kB
BEPP
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1 Answers1

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Active — The total amount of buffer or page cache memory, in kilobytes, that is in active use. This is memory that has been recently used and is usually not reclaimed for other purposes.

Inactive — The total amount of buffer or page cache memory, in kilobytes, that are free and and available. This is memory that has not been recently used and can be reclaimed for other purposes.

Ref : https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/deployment_guide/s2-proc-meminfo

greemwahr
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Party Time
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    Active(file) — The amount of file cache memory, in kibibytes, that is in active use, or was in active use since the last time the system reclaimed memory. Inactive(file) — The amount of file cache memory, in kibibytes, that is newly loaded from the disk, or is a candidate for reclaiming. – Jack Liu Shurui Dec 12 '20 at 14:20
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    I have huge active(file) memory even after I kill all processes in a docker container. What could that be due to? Can that be reclaimed if required by user processes? – MrR Aug 06 '21 at 01:54